Through the Looking Glass
Study Guide
Study Questions
What happens to Alice as she progresses up the chess board?
Crossing the Third Square
In the Fourth Square
In the Fifth
In the Sixth
The Seventh
The Eighth
What people, or types of person, do you find represented (perhaps satirically) in Looking Glass?
Does Looking Glass seem a continuation of Wonderland?  In what ways are the two works different?
Does this seem to be the same Alice that we met in Wonderland
How many examples of reversals from our normal world do you find in the Looking Glass World?  How many of these are actually in keeping with the kind of reversal that occurs in mirrors?
Does Alice seem to grow up as she progresses from the second square to the eighth?
Jabberwocky
Jabberwocky has been called "nonsense verse of the highes order" (I forget by whom).  One thing that contributes to its fascination is that it is possible to discern a grammatical structure that follows the rules of English: verbs (or words that sound like nouns) where verbs should be, nouns (or words that sound like nouns) where nouns are needed, etc.  Can you make grammatical sense of all of Jabberwocky's sentences?
Dick VandeVelde, SJ, of Loyola University at Chicago, has compiled a helpful Glossary of Terms in Jabberwocky.  Take a look - it's well done and interesting.
Two Descriptions in "Alice on the Stage" (written in 1887)
The Red Queen.  The Red Queen must be cold and calm; she must be formal and strict, yet not unkindly; pedantic to the tenth degree, the concentrated essence of all governesses!
The White Queen.  The White Queen seemed, to my dreaming fancy, gentle, stupid, fat and pale; helpless as an infant; and with a slow, maundering, bewildered air about her just suggesting imbecility, but never quite passing into it; that would be fatal to any comic efect she might otherwise produce.

January 10, 2000